


For Stars, We Fall

by AkumaStrife



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Constellation AU, Falling Stars AU, Multi, for the Strange Constellations zine, just six kids being smitten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 02:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15596556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkumaStrife/pseuds/AkumaStrife
Summary: Gansey has never seen a true fallen star before, but when a trio of them crash out of the sky in the middle of the night, Noah becoming suddenly corporeal beside him, it's as if the universe is begging him to investigate.He finds more, loses more, than he could've ever anticipated.





	For Stars, We Fall

“What are we even _doing_ out here?”

“I’m sure it fell around here, close,” Gansey answered. “You weren’t sleeping anyway, stop snipping at me.”

“He’s incapable.” And then Noah grunted, like Ronan had hit him, like Ronan had swung at him and actually connected.

Good. That was good. Tonight was a good night, and even better for a night filled with _possibilities_ and _discovery._

Cabeswater was either clanging full of noise or so quiet it hummed; tonight it was the later, a charge in it that spurred Gansey’s feet on, his best friends close behind. The star—that’s what it was, wasn’t it?— was too big, too bright, to have fallen far. Something had streaked across the sky and entered their atmosphere, had hurtled through the night sky screaming like their terrible little tea kettle that Gansey couldn’t bear to throw out.

It hadn’t fallen far, and Gansey was determined to find it first. Whatever it was. Even just a weather balloon. Finding a weather balloon would at least be an answer and he could continue without wondering.

Gansey loved to wonder just about as much as he liked to _know._

He would. They were close; he could feel it, if not only for the glow through the trees. But this was Cabeswater—as magical as it was mysterious—and the trees both soaked up the light and reflected it back out. A path, a beacon drawing them in and leading to one of the many clearings Gansey could never hope to catalogue.

The clearing was lit up bright like it had spotlights—it did, in a way. Three. Three people stood, glowing warm enough to chase away the shadows, and Gansey could only stand and stare. The forest seemed to do the same; everything was still, quiet-not-quiet, and shockingly bright.

Then Ronan crashed into his back, pushing him forward. Noah next passing through them both and stumbling down into the grass laughing, still behind in the way he was enjoying hurried searching more than the task at hand.

“Gansey, that’s not a fucking star.”

“There you are,” the girl said sharply, and threw her hands up.

There was something so familiar, so heart-wrenchingly _known_ about her, about the two boys at her side, that Gansey thought maybe he’d seen them before, years ago. He _knew them_. And they him. He could see it in their expressions.

“We’ve been looking for you,” the girl said, coming towards him, coming closer, the air humming, buzzing, setting all of Gansey’s nerves, his hair, on end. The boys followed.

Closer. Closest.

Past him.

They stopped in front of Noah.

The girl took his hands in hers.

Noah jumped, looking down at how their hands were connected, were solid, the fine blond hair on his arms standing up. “You feel like me,” Noah said.

The three did not look dead, not like Noah. In fact, they looked more luminous and alive than Gansey had seen anyone in a long time. He didn’t know how she could possibly feel like Noah when all Noah felt like was static and jammed radio signals, dismally sad.

She looked, quite possibly, like if Gansey held her hands as Noah did, she would feel only of wild magic barely contained, teeming to escape.

He very much wanted to hold her hands.

She smiled, jostling Noah’s hands. “That’s because you’re meant to be with us, one of us. Sorry we’re late.”

“Late?”

“We were to collect you, when you died.”

“But, dude… I’ve been dead for seven years.”

The girl frowned, tilting her head. It was oddly human when it was obvious she was not, and something about that fact made it stand out more than it should have. “I see. We are… later than anticipated. Time is relative, and moves different, where we are from.”

“We took a wrong turn. Wrong galaxy,” one of the other boys said, joyous despite the blunder. He was looking at Gansey, leaning forward far enough he was on the verge of upset, even with his hands stiff at his sides to keep from clearly wanting to touch. His mouth was made for smiling and thus smiling more for it, making up for lost time. “You remember me, Richard, don’t you? I was there, in the sky, watching, assisting. I wanted to bring you in, connect you, but _Veneficus_ said it wasn’t your time.”

The boy in the middle, subdued, softer, dusted in a soft brown that shimmered, looked directly at Gansey; looked through him into a past that Gansey tried to forget.

“The fuck,” Ronan spat, looking between them. He stepped up at Gansey’s elbow, rigid and poised, spoiling for a fight against a threat he couldn’t identify.

Gansey, privately, concurred the sentiment. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” even if the Latin (a name?) rung bells in his memory and he tried to grasp at it like minnows in the pond at the Barns, all those years ago.

“Of course we have,” the girl said, turning to look between Gansey and Ronan, dark eyes deep enough to spiral out into a clouded night sky. “You studied us, you were in love with us, were you not? Whispering our names into the sky, reaching with the telescope.”

_Veneficus._ The star. Realization hit Gansey hard enough he stopped breathing, and the other boy nodded eagerly. Not a boy though. A fallen star. Three of them, standing before him in mostly human forms. He only then noticed the burnished gold thread tied around each of their necks, loose and floating without weight. The tails drifted down into their shirts, lazily in the air, into nothing. But when one moved too suddenly the tails on the others’ string jerked and pulled, spinning around to point at each other—needles on a compass. Tied. Connected.

Not just one star, but a _constellation,_ standing here before him in his magical forest in his magical town.

But not for him. For Noah.

“ _Veneficus,”_ he repeated, looking to the boy in the middle. For the first time the boy’s serious expression softened, almost a smile, as he nodded. “The Magician.”

“But I was called Adam, when I was human,” Adam offered. His voice was just as soft as his visage, thrumming with a power buried beneath it and lilting along his words in the cadence of music, looping reminiscent of Gansey’s own calligraphy.

Ronan inhaled sharp, and though Gansey waited, he did not hear him exhale. Ronan looked at Adam as if he found him very agreeable, and thus was going to be considerably disagreeable because of it. Gansey put it out of his mind. There were more important things to work through. His thoughts spun out with possibilities before regaining traction.

“So you, connected, present at the time of the—oh, _Apis,_ the bee,” and his voice wavered at the memory, at the thought, conflicted knowing that _Apis_ had apparently been present. The cause of? No, that didn’t sound right.

_Apis’_ eyes softened, finally taking the steps Gansey knew he wanted to, close and reaching and eager to brush fingers over his face. They felt like placing hands against an old TV screen—static fizzling just beyond reach. Oh. A star really did feel the same as Noah always had.

“Gansey, my boy, you are safe, and you are loved by magic and history and the stars themselves, do not dwell on the past. But, you may call me Henry, if the reminder will cause you pain.”

Gansey could say nothing, eyes locked on the golden thread around his slim throat. In his ears he heard the hum, of the forest and the power radiating from the stars, from Henry while close, and could only remember the hum of wasps.

“Blue,” Ronan guessed, tearing his eyes from Adam to Blue, the loud pitch of his voice yanking Gansey into the present again.

_Caeruleum._ The epicenter of the constellation _Penna_ , the original point. _Penna:_ the feather, the three stars in an arching line representing flight. Of course. How could Gansey have ever doubted.

“Oh, you speak like the old ones; the stars,” Blue said.

“It’s the language of the trees, _vermiculus.”_

Blue’s mouth twisted, disgruntled and amused at once. “What are trees but stars fallen?”

Ronan didn’t have anything to say to that, expression more contemplative than Gansey has seen it in weeks. Or maybe he was just looking at Adam again.

“I thought it was Latin,” Noah said, too loud to be the whisper he intended.

“No difference,” Henry said.

Gansey still couldn’t quite rationalize how there were stars here, standing before them, but they felt real, Henry’s hands solid and keeping all his nerves on end, affecting him just as anyone else. More, even.

“You are safe now _,”_ Blue said, bringing Noah’s face in to place a kiss on his forehead. Noah’s skin shimmered where she’d been, spreading slowly outward. “We’ve come to take you home, _Recordatus._ ” The name drew light from around the clearing, phantasmic fireflies, into Noah’s skin. A ritual, Gansey thought, if he’d ever seen one. All at once he felt as an outsider, an interloper into a phase of life he wasn’t meant to see yet. Was this for him, one day?

Ronan gasped, small and tight, a choke caught in his throat, and covered his mouth tightly.

“What?” Noah looked back at him. “Ro, what’s wrong?”

Ronan looked to Blue, chin held forcibly high, and nodded at her. “No one’s gonna forget about you now, Noah. You’ll always be remembered.”

“You’re taking him. Away,” Gansey realized. He’d been too preoccupied before in the wave of discovery to fit meaning into Blue’s words. His stomach sank, chest aching tight as he thought of what life would be like now, even if Noah had been so intangible; thought of searching for his dead Welsh king with just Ronan; thought of how he was going to ask for Noah _back_ and now he was being taken before he could.

He’d taken too long. He’d missed his chance, and now they were _losing him._

“Only for a while,” Blue said. “That is what happens, to bright souls. You’ll still see him. He’ll still hear you.”

“Sorry, you had to suffer all this time,” Adam said.

Noah beamed at him—truly beamed in a way he never had before, shimmering silver, the spitting image of storybook stardust. “It wasn’t so bad. I had them. Worth it.”

“And it won’t be the last time you see us,” Henry piped up, hand against Gansey’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your time before, but that doesn’t mean you’re not meant for us.”

“Bright soul,” Gansey repeated.

Henry nodded. “We are incomplete. A minor constellation, still in its first stages. We need a few more souls to evolve into the one we’re meant to be.” Henry winked at Ronan. “Two, actually. But there’s no rush.”

“What constellation?” Ronan asked, expression pinching flustered and confused, and angry for it.

“We don’t know,” Blue said. “We won’t, until everyone’s there.”

“I love a good mystery,” Gansey said, weaker than he meant, but utterly true. Another mystery, another wonder, another thing unknown and waiting for him to discover. He breathed in, deep and expansive, and, looking at the stars in their staggered line, felt as though he might be inhaling the universe.

“How long?” Ronan asked.

“We cannot divine the future,” Adam said, carefully.

Ronan narrowed his eyes, knowing a lie as well as anyone. “Not that. How long until you take him away.”

Gansey looked to him, frowning, realizing how selfish he was being when Ronan was the one who had a complicated history with his people being taken from him before he was ready.

_“_ The night,” Henry said. “We have to be back in the sky before sunrise.”

Ronan thought for a long moment, looked at Gansey, and then back to Adam. “That’s fair.” His tone told a different story, eyes too bright, but no one said anything of it, Gansey least of all. That would be for him to fix later.

Ronan walked up between them, daring in a way Gansey could never be, and yanked Noah from Blue, dragged him back out of line. “You’re gonna light up the sky,” Ronan promised him, and pulled him in close. “Brightest thing for miles.”

A flash at the back of Noah’s neck caught Gansey’s attention and he stepped closer himself, hand on Noah’s shoulder, hand around the back of Ronan’s nape. It was gold, a small knot glittering and stretching, ever so slowly growing outward and mapped to follow the curve of Noah’s throat.

It was true, then. A string, golden as the others’, to tie him in with them.

“You’ll see us again,” Henry repeated. “We’ll come back for you. When it is time.”

“Late as hell,” Ronan grumbled.

“We know the way, now,” Adam said, thin mouth twisted up in a frown, mimicking Ronan’s. “And Noah can lead. When the time comes.”

Gansey’s eyes were drawn, inexplicably, to Blue’s, who was already staring back. “I look forward to it.”

She nodded.

And if not, he knew where they were. He’d invoked lesser powers, and if he was willing to dig up continents for his Welsh King, he’d tear apart a lot more to be part of that kind of magic.

Blue smiled, sharp, knowing. Eyes daring him to make good on it.

For the first time since all of Gansey’s travels and restless searching, he felt like he’d glimpsed what belonging could feel like.

 

**Author's Note:**

> my submission for the Strange Constellations zine (trc ot6 theme), digital copies still available!  
> https://gumroad.com/l/AzUoG


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